On Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 10:58:10AM -0600, Phil Plumbo wrote: >Ironically, all this hassle caused me to start investigating cable, and it >appears that can get far better service for $25 less per month. Hmmm.... As well as a good view of what your neighbor is looking at should you have pcanywhere installed on a winblows box. I ran a "scan local area network for servers" a while back, and boy was I suprised.... A list of about 85 open, unprotected pcanywhere sessions waiting for someone to jump on and read your e-mail, or watch you surf, or *better* yet, format the HD, were at my fingertips (Good thing I'm a nice responsible guy.). Go with cable, you'll love it until 2 or 3 other people jump on and your 2Mbit line drops to 700K, and then a couple more jump on, and it's at 300k, and then you hit peak and your crawling along the net at a couple bytes a second. (This is all based on previous experience with att/mediaone broadband 2 way cable.) Oh, and did I mention they don't like it when you run http/ftp/dns/smtp/imap over their lines? And did you know that at any time they reserve the right to monitor your surfing habits and take appropriate actions?(Whatever those are. (Oh, and they can and do sell that very information to anyone who's got green.)) My suggestion is bypass the cable crap, bypass the qwest crap and go straight to covad/speakeasy DSL. It's a little more, for about 40kbps less, but you get 2 IP's for whatever you want, they have an excellent privacy policy, ton's o services on their website (not to mention speakeasy.net localized games servers!!) and you can throw a linux box to your mom and say "Call these guys, they'll walk you through getting your networking setup and DSL working." Here's a tip about qwest, patience and persistance have their place, but nothing works better than "<ANGER>I'm a paying customer, I want to speak to your supervisor immedialtely.</ANGER>". I've dealt w/ usworst/qwest for a couple years while working for an ISP, and let me tell you, there's nothing more effective than telling them what to do. You can't expect anyone there to know anything, but if you tell them, they will listen. It does help to get someone that shows some signs of intelligence, but good luck. "The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action." > > > > >_______________________________________________ >tclug-list mailing list >tclug-list at mn-linux.org >https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -- Thomas J. Hudak Systems Administrator Sistina Software Inc. - www.sistina.com Phone: 612.379.3951 Page: 612.318.1967 Fax: 612.379.3952